Word: mehtaã
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...Sure, the book, cumbersomely titled “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” provides Future Great American Novelists’ jealous bitterness some vindication. “Opal Mehta?? is, as my friend Leon Neyfakh ’07 wrote in Fifteen Minutes last month, “a fairy tale, more or less,” and a lot of its details are as unconvincing and unfelt as pre-Pixar Disney...
...Much ink has been wasted wondering whether “Opal Mehta?? is autobiographical. Opal Mehta is surely not Kaavya Viswanathan in disguise; she is, more likely, Kaavya Viswanathan in Kaavya Viswanathan’s dreams. Letting us in on the fantasy is Viswanathan’s gift to us. We get to follow Opal as she transforms overnight from member of the “Geek Squad” to literally the center of every male’s attention...
...takes something more than wish-fulfillment and a funny premise, however, to win so much attention. Like “Mean Girls,” “Opal Mehta?? is chick lit mixed with satire. Rather than Queen Bees/Wannabes, however, Opal Mehta represents what might be called the Pre-Organization Kid, the protozoan phase of the sociological type first dutifully reduced to caricature by David Brooks in 2001. “The Organization Kid,” he wrote, is fatally “goal-oriented...
...nonstop coverage, however, the popular press has continually missed one crucial angle: the perspective of the organization kids themselves. This is Viswanathan’s contribution. Though her pop sociology is perhaps even less subtle than the professional caricature artist Tom Wolfe, “Opal Mehta?? nevertheless far outperforms “I Am Charlotte Simmons” in the department of insight...
...It’s hard to avoid tracing the similarities, though, and despite what Viswanathan has said, one must wonder, is Opal actually self-referential—a sort of “Mehta??-fiction? Where does its plot end and Viswanathan’s real life begin...